


hypnos and thanatos

by mollivanders



Category: Firefly, Lost
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All he knows is that for once, someone is hearing his thoughts instead of the other way around.</p><p>(It’s more of a relief than he can say.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	hypnos and thanatos

**Author's Note:**

> **Title: hypnos and thanatos**  
>  Fandom: Firefly/LOST  
> Rating: G  
> Characters: River/Miles  
> Author's Note: This was written for who won fic from me at . This fits at the end of my my from last year, [wander a while longer, pass these dying stars to serenity](http://prefer-my-life.livejournal.com/37739.html). One of her requests was for anything from that verse, and I wanted to explore the River/Miles dynamic I accidentally created more. Title comes from the Greek gods for sleep and peaceful death. Word Count - 1,333  
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Miles decides to stay.

The rest of _Serenity_ had taken the transport shuttles to explore the rest of the fleet. Miles knows Juliet wants to track down more people. The longer they were in space, the more he could see her wounds healing – not just closing over, but actually healing, and Juliet was clearly ready to move on.

But not everybody moved at the same pace, and there was one other person left on _Serenity_.

He finds her where she always seems to be these days; in the cockpit, fiddling with dials and muttering to herself over how their flight pattern.

“We’ll get there together, you know,” he jokes, sliding in to the captain’s seat. Mal would kick him out if (when) he found him here, but then again, Mal won’t be back for hours.

“You think you know,” River quips and Miles meets her eyes. Something was shifting between them and since he hardly knew what they had been before, he couldn’t tell now.

All he knows is that for once, someone is hearing his thoughts instead of the other way around.

(It’s more of a relief than he can say.)

“I brought you dinner,” he says, passing her a plate. Well, heated rations really, but Miles isn’t ready to complain. It feels too good to be alive, to be away from the tanks, to be separate and floating and _gone_.

(He thinks of all the people they left behind, the ones who have no way out. There are always casualties.)

“It’s okay,” River says, and for the hundredth time, Miles wonders which sentiment she is replying to – the one he said, or the one in his head.

“It’s okay,” she repeats, catching his eyes with hers, unnerving him. Moments of clarity like this with her were unsettling. “I like the salmon.”

“Mal won’t be back for hours,” he says, the words stumbling out of him like a hasty teenager’s, and he feels his cheeks burn even as she looks away.

“Not for hours,” she agrees, and focuses on the screen before her. “Help me with something?”

(So rare, so strange, to ask for help. He asks more now.)

He’s happy to give it.

 

She does not know what it is about him that opens and closes around her, only that he is here now.

(He was not there before. There were only other screaming souls and secrets. Too many secrets.)

If River was ever romantic, she lost it long ago, when books and music and equations filled up her in life in new ways. She found beauty in symmetry and wondered what made people stare at each other with strange looks in their eyes, what made them hesitate.

At the Academy, she did not think much at all (thinks she lost something of herself there forever).

But Miles looks at her sometimes, the way she’s seen other people look at each other, and River doesn’t feel confused or baffled by it. Somehow, it makes all the sense in the world –

– except she does not know how to tell him this.

Instead, she lets him circle around her, like a vulture over a wounded animal, and feels a tinge of power to it. If anything, he is the confused and baffled one, and something in River (a part thought lost long ago) fills up the spaces the Academy hollowed out.

She lets him in.

“Help me with something?” she asks.

(Not that she needs the help, but she understands balance and symmetry. And music.)

“What do you need?” he asks, standing next to her chair to see the screen better.

He is not breathy next to her; she cannot feel his heart pounding against his chest. He is as terrible at this as she is.

“Could you run an engine test?” she asks, pointing to a wall screen. “I want to optimize our flight pattern while you do that. See if everything checks out.”

(She’d never try this with the others; they all expect something more from her.

But Miles doesn’t expect anything but River, so River is what he gets.)

Screens light up while he runs the test and River tweaks the flight pattern to save fuel cells, feels comfort in the purpose (in the logic of balance and drive). Mal doesn’t understand it all, but he understands she’ll get them through.

Juliet understood what River understood – it’s not _Serenity_ that needs River, but the other way around. The way the engine hums and how the ship dips and sails through a cloudless dark sky, flanked by other shadows.

(Shadows; not ghosts. She knows the difference now.)

“We should check out the engine,” he says, a low rumble next to her.

That, she’s still learning.

 

He follows her to the engine room, a strange feeling in his gut, her combat boots building an echo around them. The ship is deathly quiet but for them.

It’s familiar, and he knows from where.

The silence is broken by the engine, which makes its own strange music, humming and whirring in an orange dusk. River seems to hear something in it, smiles that strange smile that seems to be only for herself and raises herself on her toes.

“I used to dance,” she tells him, pulling at her skirt hem. “Ballet and tap and folk and nobody was better than me.”

“I’m sure they weren’t,” Miles agrees, pausing at the doorway to watch her turn in a slow circle and then, surprisingly, her hand is pulling at his.

“I don’t dance,” he says but he doesn’t have to, just holds her hand up as she moves and spins around him like an unwitting predator.

“Are you always like this?” he asks, knowing the answer, and her smile falls. Almost naturally, she steps towards him – lets his hands settle on her – and her broken dance is over.

“Simon won’t understand,” she whispers in his ear, the reason they’ve come to the engine room forgotten. Finally, Miles thinks he can feel what she feels – in this space between everything and nothing, he doesn’t have to be gone and separate. He’s tied to the engine and its gentle thrum, tied to thick walls carrying a precious cargo.

(She is precious, he decides.)

“But I do,” she adds, and the feeling in his stomach wrenches up to his voice (his hands settle tightly on her waist).

“Do you think I do?” he asks, his old manufactured self bleeding through. Her laughter tickles his ear, her breath warm and damp on his skin.

“We all want to,” she says, and it’s ominous but for the way she looks past him. “Hello, Daniel.”

 

She feels Miles try to pull away but she holds him, amused at his and Daniel’s collective embarrassment. He’s warm under her hands – she thought he’d be cold and is a tiny bit disappointed – but his blood is finally singing and there’s an electric feeling in her lungs next to him.

“I just came to check on the engine,” Daniel says, still avoiding her eyes, and she pretends this is normal, because it is, for some people. Takes Miles’ hand and steps aside, letting Daniel pass them to look at the engine.

“All looks good here, then,” Daniel says, wiping his hands after a quick look. “Just saw someone changed the pattern and thought I’d check down here.”

There’s a moment where Miles and Daniel finally look each other in the eye and then turn away, straight-faced, and then Daniel’s gone and Miles lets out a snort.

“I thought we were alone,” he says, and relaxes under River, energy restored.

“I didn’t,” she says, grinning like the teenager she never was. “Charlotte’s here too.”

“Ah,” Miles huffs and River wonders if they can be like this now. If this is how people look and fill up the hollow spaces other people carved out of them. “Seems they wanted to be alone, then.”

“Yes,” she says seriously, and leans against him.

(The worries in his head die away.)

_Finis_


End file.
